Is Trump creating a death cult?

Heaven's Gate

Amid demonstrations against shelter-in-place policies, Michael Tomasky wonders how far Trump and Republicans will go by opening up the country too soon:

,,,people are going to get sick, and they’re going to die. And the Trump GOP view is: Well, that’s life. Death, that is.

Most of them will have been old. They’re worth the price. Sure, they fought in wars, tended victory gardens, built the greatest middle class ever. That was then. Today, they’re a burden. 

Louisiana GOP Senator John Kennedy came oh-so-close to saying it openly Wednesday night to Tucker Carlson (who thanked him for his “wise words”): “We’ve got to reopen, and when we do, the coronavirus is gonna spread faster.” He threw in that “we have to be ready,” but he knows very well that we’re not ready...

That, between now and Election Day, is what Trump is going to divide this country into—the timid people who seek safety and science and reassurance, and the brave souls who are willing to embrace the liberation of death...

Thus, the question of the 2020 election, as Trump and his party attempt to frame it: Are you manly enough to sneer at death, like real men do in the movies (which are fake, of course), or are you one of those pusillanimous patsies who quivers under the bed sheets like some avocado toast-eating intellectual, whining that we have to listen to the experts? 

San Francisco's virus information

SF Department of Public Health

For daily updates on the virus in San Francisco, go to the Dept. of Public Health's site. 

The city has had only 20 confirmed deaths from the virus so far. The problem with every jurisdiction's infection numbers: more testing means more cases are found. On the other hand, death from the virus is easier to count.

How much we don't know

Felix Salmon in Axios:

We're fighting the greatest public-health crisis in a century, and we barely understand our enemy. We cannot afford to stay in lockdown until a cure or vaccine arrives — but anybody trying to reopen our cities needs information that is frustratingly difficult to find.

The big picture: The single biggest obstacle to reopening the economy is a lack of visibility. We don't know the scope of the pandemic itself, or its economic fallout, or how its trajectory will change as we embark upon an ad-hoc effort to reopen the economy.

Where it stands: The Trump administration's plan for reopening the American economy explicitly calls for "up-to-date data," but very few state or local leaders will actually have strong data on which to base their decision-making.

We don't know how many people the coronavirus has killed or how many people have had it. The official tally of over 37,000 deaths is too low, because it's based on people who died after testing positive for the coronavirus, but we don't know how low.

We don't know how many Americans have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus shutdown. The official tally is 22 million new applications for unemployment benefits. But millions more haven't been able to make it through the application process or haven't tried.

The biggest employers will be able to rehire their legions of workers, but the bigger concern is the businesses that will never be able to reopen. We don't know how many of them there will be.

We don’t know when we'll have a treatment, whether summer will tame the spread, or whether the virus could return in the fall even stronger. We don't know whether we're immune once we've had it or for how long.

We don't know whether tech will allow us to trace it or whether enough Americans would sign up for that even if it does. We don’t know when it’ll be safe to fly, go to a game, or pack into a school or a church. 

Be smart: It’s shocking and a bit scary how much we do not know, despite how much we now do know.